Author from East Jordan hopes his story will inspire youth to strive for more

September 24, 2012|Aebra Coe (231) 439-9397- acoe@petoskeynews.com

Courtesy photo.

EAST JORDAN -- The story of East Jordan High School graduate David Burch, 52, is one of tragedy, struggle and, ultimately, of overcoming unthinkable adversity. Burch has recorded his story in a memoir, "Pocket Full of Dreams," to be launched with a book signing at the Jordan Valley District Library 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 11, and reception at Murray's Bar and Grill in East Jordan afterward.

A portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the East Jordan Rotary Strive program which provides academic and life mentoring for students at risk of not graduating high school.

"I'm trying to get the word out to these kids at-risk: If I can do it, you can do it, too," said Burch.

He would like the book to be used as an educational tool. While there are mature themes, he believes it would be appropriate for students as young as seventh-grade.

It took Burch a year and a half to write the book and, he said, digging through decades of buried emotions was the hardest part.

The story starts in 1975, but goes farther back to when his older brother was born when their mother was 14 years old and their father was 16. By the time she was 19, their mother had given birth to three children and the family of five was living in Trenton in a house with no running water, the Ford plant on one side and I-75 on the other.

"Next thing you know, we moved into this house with four bedrooms," said Burch. Each child had their own bedroom and got new bicycles for Christmas. "Things were going great."

Then, in the summer of 1967, Burch's book describes police and federal agents surrounding the house and arresting their father. The book relates that he was convicted of robbing 11 banks and the family was destitute again with their father in prison and 21-year-old mother not in possession of job skills or a high school diploma.

In the years following their father's imprisonment, Burch and his brother were bullied in school and Burch had vivid nightmares every night.

While he was in the third- through sixth-grades, Burch's mother moved up to East Jordan to live with a man she would marry. "That was the only normal period of my childhood," he said. "Things were going along fine."

But then, his father got out of prison and won custody of the children. Life with his father, said Burch, was traumatic and difficult. When he was in seventh-grade, Burch's mother died in a car accident in East Jordan.

A few years later, when he couldn't stand life with his father anymore, Burch hitched a ride back to East Jordan to live with his stepfather. Nobody up north knew about his tumultuous past and he felt like it was a new start for him.

"Then, it turns into a love story," he said of the last section of the book. He met the woman who would become his wife in East Jordan when he was 15. They were initially friends and then he courted her while in the Army after high school. When he finished his service in the military, they married.

Burch attended a community college while working full time and was hired in as a runner and mail clerk at a wall street financial firm in Grand Rapids. "You couldn't start any lower than I started," he said.

Now, three decades later, Burch holds one of the most prestigious positions in the company.

His hope is that his story can inspire young people who don't believe in themselves. "You can be anything you want to," he said.